It seems counter intuitive and even foolish to suggest that you could increase innovation and creativity by getting rid of copyrights and patents. But there is a great great example of an industry that actually thrives in both sales and innovation, despite not having any copyrights or patents - the fashion industry.

This TED talk explains it quite well : http://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashio...

The elephant in the corner of your argument is trademarks, which are vigorously protected by fashion labels.

You're right, I'm conflating the two. I mean to be saying intellectual property law in general, which I am not a huge fan of.

If you're against "intellectual property" then you shouldn't use that propaganda term. Refer to the specific legal protections at issue, like copyright, patents, or trademarks, because they are all have very different functions and purposes.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Copyrights, patents and trademarks all share a single unifying assumption: ideas are things that can be owned. Since I disagree with that assumption, it makes sense to speak about "disagreeing with intellectual property" if IP is just a synonym for "a legal framework that uses violence to support laws that allow ideas to be owned."

That's an interesting piece, thanks for sharing. I think from the perspective of "what existing pieces of culture can I use to create something new" IP is actually a useful bucket. From the perspective of people who have already created or are consuming that piece of culture, I agree that combining trademark with copyright and patents is not useful.